President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton standing on the steps of the North Portico of the White House in May 2000.

Associated Press

About 4,000 pages of record from the Clinton presidency are being made public Friday afternoon at 1 p.m., in the second round of releases by the Clinton Presidential Library. Eventually, about 30,000 pages of documents will be released in coming weeks. We’ll be looking through the documents and pulling out the highlights. (You can see our dive on the first release here.) Follow our live dive on the second release below.

According to the list of documents provided by the National Archives ahead of the release, topics will include the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia; documents related to the Florida vote recount in 2000 and the presidential transition; and papers from health-care adviser Ira Magaziner. Also in the list are documents from several speechwriters, as well as pages related to the JFK assassination.

Some early takes: A newspaper clipping on Somalia has notes from President Clinton, which appear to read: “Can we, should we do more?” Here is the full document, with other clips viewed and commented on by the president.

Many of the documents include heavy edits and back and forths on Clinton speeches. For instance, one passage in this economic speech draft in December 1994 is marked “bulls–t.” Here is the full document.

THE JFK CONNECTION: In July 1998, National Security Council staffer Jonathan Elkind sought guidance on whether Vice President Al Gore should raise the issue of Russian archival data on Lee Harvey Oswald in a meeting with Russian Prime Minister Sergey Kiriyenko.

In a memo addressed to Richard Saunders, Vice President Al Gore’s deputy national security adviser, Mr. Elkind said the Assassination Records Review Board, an independent agency created in 1992 to re-examine for release federal agencies’ assassination-related records, was about to close down but that it suspected that Russian intelligence agencies had “further archival data” on Mr. Oswald, who assassinated President John F. Kennedy in 1963. See the document here; pages 9 and 33.

Paul Begala memo in 1995, on State of the Union speech draft: ”I really don’t like the President making fun of our ass-whipping in November, or suggesting it was because of him we got creamed. I hasten to add that James disagrees: he thinks it’ll be effective self-deprecation; I’m concerned it could look like a white flag of surrender. ” (Page 188 of this this doc.)

1995 STATE OF THE UNION: In this document, page 192, Bill Galston warns the coming State of the Union may be the president’s last chance to address the American people in such a setting — but says voters haven’t given up on Mr. Clinton.

In July 1997, Shelley Fidler, chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, suggested Carl Sagan—an astronomer who worked to popularize science and who had died the previous year—as a recipient for the Medal of Freedom.

Ms. Fidler, in a memo to Todd Stern, assistant to the president and staff secretary, noted that the location of the Mars Rover’s landing had just been renamed after Mr. Sagan. “I wonder if that boosts Carl Sagan posthumously for a Medal of Freedom,” Ms. Fidler wrote, adding that the astronomer had been “one of the very first to sound the warning on climate.”

In the email, Ms. Fidler noted that she had already suggested Frank Sherwood Rowland, a chemistry professor who had won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995, as a recipient for the medal. “He’s alive,” she wrote. Ansel Adams, the photographer and environmentalist, would be “another good dead person,” she added.

“We’re having trouble thinking up great living people,” she wrote in the conclusion of the email. “I guess that’s everyone’s affliction these days.”

Workers stand beside the crater Wednesday, June 26, 1996 after a deadly truck bomb exploded at a U.S. military facility in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.

GRAPPLING WITH TERRORISM IN 1996: The Clinton administration documents show the president’s aides grappling with terrorism as a rising phenomenon, particularly after the 1996 attack on the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. That attack killed 19 U.S. servicemen and left hundreds injured. A federal judge later ruled that Hezbollah carried out the bombing under the direction of Iran.

Memos show the White House staff sorting through painful events of the time – including the Khobar Towers attack and the “unproven possibility of a bomb on TWA 800,’’ as well as the 1995 poison-gas attack that killed more than a dozen people in the Tokyo subway and the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

THE 2000 ELECTION: The latest batch of documents released by the Clinton Presidential Library offers insights into the White House’s effort to strike the right tone after the Supreme Court ruled in George W. Bush’s favor, resolving the dispute over the 2000 presidential election.

Drafts of the speech that President Bill Clinton gave on Dec. 14 show a round-the-clock editing process as the president’s advisers considered how to encourage the country to accept the result while still noting flaws in the electoral system.Read More.

JOKES! Drafts of President Clinton’s 1997 White House Correspondents Dinner speech show the winnowing of jokes.

In a section toward the beginning of the speech about exhibits at the newly opened Newseum, a joke about longtime CNN anchor Bernard Shaw is discarded, but one about Ann Rice and Bob Novak stays in. In the speech as delivered, jokes about Rice, Joe Klein, Bob Woodward (in altered form), Johnny Apple and Brian Williams all made the cut.

SAYING IT RIGHT: In preparing Vice President Al Gore’s remarks at a breakfast for then-Prime Minister Tony Blair, speechwriters worried Mr. Gore would mispronounce the prime minister’s wife’s name, Cherie—so they wrote it out phonetically, as “Sheh-REE.” This document, page 84.

REPETITION IS FINE: In September 1998, Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal wrote a memo to Hillary Clinton urging her not to hesitate to repeat the talking points she had used at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, earlier that year. “You shouldn’t assume that it has been widely heard or reported,” he wrote. “Repetition, in any case, helps make the message penetrate.”

He urged her to discuss civil society, the need for a strong international community, and the need for sound economic policy via good family policy.

AH, THE ’90s. Included in the records from the Clinton presidency made public Friday afternoon was a draft of the guest list (begins on page 106) for a 1998 state dinner during U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair‘s visit. Here’s a look at some of the names:

WORRIES IN 1994: The documents released Friday by the William J. Clinton Presidential Library show the White House fretting ahead of the 1994 election and then contemplating how to respond to the Republican surge that gave the GOP control of Congress.

In a September 1994 draft memo, Clinton advisers John Podesta and Todd Stern offer a grim assessment of Democrats’ prospects in the approaching midterms.

“The president’s approval ratings are low, Republicans seem aggressive, and Democrats appear hunkered down with no message,” the memo says. “As a result, the conventional wisdom is that the Democrats are going to get whipped in November, the only question being how badly.”

SEND A MUSLIM! An unnamed author—likely a National Security Council staffer—scrawled a note regarding a 1995 aviation directive that ordered increased airport and airline security. “Send a Muslim! This effort will get us to the real issue “terrorism” vs. a perceived issue of religion (Muslims against U.S. and vice versa),” the author wrote. “Recommend—tasking state to find a prominent Muslim associate [sic] directly or indirectly with the U.S. gov.”

The note follows a letter from then-Secretary of Transportation Federico Peña addressed to the White House chief of staff, proposing to hold a press conference to announce heightened security at airports. He urged the White House to spread the increased security measures across all means of transportation, noting concerns from the airline industry that it would be adversely impacted if it were the only forum for increased security. “I would propose that the White House tomorrow publicly acknowledge that the DOT security actions are part of an administration-wide effort in response to a general increase in the potential for anti-American terrorism,” Mr. Peña wrote.

ASS-POCKET FULL OF MONEY: In preparations for his 1999 State of the Union speech, President Clinton discussed with his staff what percentage of the surplus would need to be set aside to keep Medicare running and start a prescription drug benefit program. Mr. Clinton offered one solution: “Can’t say an ass-pocket full of money, can you?” he asked. “Even though it’s real money, even here. Even for these turkeys.”

A FRUSTRATED PRESIDENT: Remarks by Bill Clinton in August 1994 in a private Oval Office meeting showed him worried that the White House’s message was falling flat and that people didn’t appreciate what he had achieved — and contrasts that to the success of the GOP on its messaging. “It’s astonishing how much we’ve done. But we lose thestory line, and we don’t have anybody else out there helping us with it. And nobody’s out there fighting for it, and you get no– and so we’ve got figure out how to reestablish it with real energy.” This document, page 21.

TOUGH CROWD: In late November 2000, as the battle over hanging chads and uncounted ballots continued, Vice President Al Gore counseled patience in a speech and said there must be a full and accurate count of the vote. Nearly three weeks had passed, and the presidential election remained unsettled.

“Ignoring votes means ignoring democracy itself,” Mr. Gore said. “And if we ignore the votes of thousands in Florida in this election, how can you or any American have confidence that your vote will not be ignored in a future election?”

Not all Democrats were moved by the vice president’s message, though. The newly released documents from the Clinton Presidential Library include an email in which longtime congressional aide John Lawrence blasts Mr. Gore’s remarks.

“You know I have total faith in the administration … well, at least in you,” Mr. Lawrence wrote to White House aide Lisa Kountoupes. “Who the hell wrote Gore’s speech last night?! Aaaarrrrgggghhh!”

In late November 2000, as the battle over hanging chads and uncounted ballots continued, Vice President Al Gore counseled patience in a speech and said there must be a full and accurate count of the vote. Nearly three weeks had passed, and the presidential election remained unsettled.

PUBLIC DISTRUST IN GOVERNMENT: A November 1994 memo (starts on page 68) written just before midterm elections—in which Republicans gained control of both the House and Senate for the first time in 40 years—addressed strategies for government reform to regain citizens’ trust. The memo, authored by policy advisers Bruce Reed, Bill Galston and Paul Weinstein and speechwriter Michael Waldman, and addressed to the White House chief of staff, called public distrust in government a “fundamental political fact of our time.”

“Voters believed that Bill Clinton understood this situation, and would act to rectify it,” the memo continues. “But for all of our efforts over the past two years, the public is now more disillusioned, more embittered, than it was in November 1992.”

The note analyzes the reasons behind public distrust, calling the government “bloated, irrational, and inefficient – an ossified institution in an era of constant innovation.” It acknowledged that special interests “do have too much power,” noting such groups’ involvement in defeating health-care legislation.

Reform is necessary, the memo argued, because trust in government would be essential to carrying out controversial aspects of Mr. Clinton’s agenda, including health care, welfare reform, and deficit reduction. The administration’s reform agenda should include campaign reform requiring broadcasters to provide free time to candidates, a national initiative and referendum process, implementation of term limits, and lobbying reform, among other changes to the bureaucracy, the note said.

Here’s how Mr. Clinton’s approval rating looked throughout his presidency, according to Gallup polling:

AVERAGE PEOPLE WITH HORROR STORIES: A memo written early in Bill Clinton’s presidency lays out a plan for a two-day hearing on health-care reform and acknowledges that the main objective was to give the White House political cover when groups complain that their views haven’t been heard.

“Even though our primary goal is political inoculation, we should not lose the opportunity for some public education,” the memo says. “Some testifiers should be average people with horror stories, middle class families worried about the future, and senior citizens. These average people should testify during those periods when we believe more people will be watching.” Read full WSJ item here.

Ever wonder how the White House vets nominees? Today’s documents dump offered an insight. As the White House was vetting prospective members of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, it used a host of search terms, including “illegal,” “drug,” “convict,” “discriminat” [sic], “harass,” “Clinton,” “corrupt” and “complain.” See the full list of keywords here for one nominee:

Comments (5 of 16)

We liberals focus on one qualification for office: is he/she smart enough? Hillary’s got the credentials.

You see, we value an education. We understand that an educated person takes a public office with their own set of institutional and personal baggage, but we rely on the education to help overcome these obstacles. That’s what dooms Republicans and why they deliberately devalue an education in favor of social values. An educated Republican sees the hand-waving nonsense of focusing on social values which makes him/her a pariah in their own political party. At that moment they become an outcast and unelectable.

6:02 pm March 14, 2014

MiMe wrote:

Clinton left Bush a budget surplus, who quickly squandered it, just like daddy’s oil money.

Clinton’s impeachment was for lying about sexual escapades. I looked bad, but most liberals don’t give a hoot about this sort of stuff. Republicans, however, do because they want their prez to be innocent and asexual, that’s why they end up with the crazy candidates that they do.

5:18 pm March 14, 2014

aznalabukm wrote:

any papers released commenting on cigars and a female intern

5:12 pm March 14, 2014

Truth wrote:

Want to sink the Clinton's for life?

Release all the data collected during the impeachment.

4:58 pm March 14, 2014

Slim wrote:

did they retrieve the papers the Clinton chief of staff stuffed down this pants and walked away with?

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Washington Wire is one of the oldest standing features in American journalism. Since the Wire launched on Sept. 20, 1940, the Journal has offered readers an informal look at the capital. Now online, the Wire provides a succession of glimpses at what’s happening behind hot stories and warnings of what to watch for in the days ahead. The Wire is led by Reid J. Epstein, with contributions from the rest of the bureau. Washington Wire now also includes Think Tank, our home for outside analysis from policy and political thinkers.